Saturday, February 18, 2017

A large part of what we know about the cosmos comes from what the
astronomers call “surveys”, i.e the imaging of large portion of the sky
conducted in a systematic fashion and when possible in multiple colors.
Survey astronomy requires dedicated telescopes finely tuned to cover a
large field of view and large detectors capable to capture several
square degrees of the sky at once.

In the past these surveys consisted mainly in huge archives of
photographic plates which had to be visually inspected and analysed.
Nowadays, large field digital detectors allow to acquire and store the
information in digital form and this has caused a true revolution in
field. The huge volume of data produced by an average survey is so large
to make impossible for a single researcher or group of researchers to
exploit all the scientific applications of the data and therefore data
become immediately or almost immediately public thus allowing a large,
worldwide community to access first quality data. The talk will try to
outline these and other aspects of survey astronomy.